creole

[kree-ohl]

creole, Span. criollo [probably from crío=child], term originally applied in West Indies to the native-born descendants of the Spanish conquerors. The term has since been applied to certain descendants in the West Indies and the American continents of French, Portuguese, and Spanish settlers. The creoles were distinguished from the natives, the blacks, and from people born in Europe. A sharp distinction of interest always lay between the creoles, whose chief devotion was to the colony, and the foreign-born officials, whose devotion was to the mother country. Never precise, the term acquired various meanings in different countries. It has biological and cultural connotations. The term was early adopted in the United States in Louisiana, where it is still used to distinguish the descendants of the original French settlers from the Cajuns, who are at least partially descended from the Acadian exiles. The word is also commonly applied to things native to the New World, such as creole cuisine and creole horses. The term is also used in places distant from the Americas, such as the island of Mauritius, but there it has lost much of its original meaning. The picturesque life of the Louisiana creoles has been ably depicted in the works of Lafcadio Hearn, George Washington Cable, and Grace King.

See F. J. Woods, Marginality and Identity (1972).

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia Copyright © 2004.
Licensed from Columbia University Press

creole

Any pidgin language that has become established as the native language of a speech community. A creole usually arises when speakers of one language become economically or politically dominant over speakers of another. A simplified or modified form of the dominant group's language (pidgin), used for communication between the two groups, may eventually become the native language of the less-powerful community. Examples include Gullah (derived from English), spoken in the Sea Islands of the southeastern U.S.; Haitian Creole (derived from French), spoken in Haiti; and Papiamentu (derived from Spanish and Portuguese), spoken in Curaçao, Aruba, and Bonaire.

Learn more about creole with a free trial on Britannica.com.

Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.

Creole

The word Creole is an adaptation of the Spanish word criollo.

Creole may refer to:

People

Creole peoples, a number of distinct ethnic groups in various countries; mix of culture
Louisiana Creole people
Creole class, an inhabitant of the colonies established by Spain and Portugal
Belizean Kriol people
Sierra Leone Creole people
Krio Dayak people, an ethnic group in West Kalimantan, Indonesia

Languages

Creole language, a stable language that originated from a combination of other languages

Some specific creole languages:

Haitian Creole, an official language of Haiti
Louisiana Creole French, a language of Louisiana
Belizean Kriol language, language spoken in Belize
Cape Verdean Creole, a language spoken on the islands of Cape Verde
Krio Dayak language, a language of the Krio Dayak people in West Kalimantan, Indonesia
Liberian Kreyol language, a language of Liberia
Mauritian Creole, a French based creole of Mauritius
Seychellois Creole, a French based creole of the Seychelles
Guinea-Bissau Creole, a language of Guinea-Bissau
Negerhollands, a Dutch based creole language once spoken in the U.S. Virgin Islands
Bislama, an English based creole of Vanuatu
Llanito, a Spanish and English based language of Gibraltar
Bajan (Barbadian Creole), an English based language of Barbados
Antillean Creole (Créole Martiniquais), a French based creole of the Lesser Antilles
Tok Pisin, an official language of Papua New Guinea.

Other

"Creole" (song), a song by Beyoncé
Creole Records, a record label
Creole Pig, a breed of pig from Haiti
Louisiana Creole cuisine
Zydeco or Louisiana Creole folk music
CREOLE, a component model of the General Architecture for Text Engineering text processing system
Créolité, a Martinican literary movement
Criolla Grande, also known as "Criolla", an Argentine wine grape
Creole (markup), a common wiki markup language to be used across different wikis
Creole earring, a type or style of earring distinguishable by its three quarter moon shape.